by Jeff Guinn
But when Sara woke at dawn, the cottage was still empty and she knew something must be wrong. She got up and dressed, quickly ate a little fruit for breakfast, put on her warmest cloak, and went outside into the cold winter morning. She intended to walk from the cottage to the meeting barn atop the high hill, but she had only gone a few hundred yards when she noticed a commotion along the road toward Canterbury. Peeking around the adults lining the thoroughfare, she saw a horrifying sight—her parents, auntie, and Arthur chained together and being led toward town by blue-cloaked, leering Richard Culmer. Sara’s instinct was to scream and run to us, but my precious girl had enough sense to realize that would only make things worse. She might be arrested, too, and used as a bargaining chip to make her parents and me do whatever Culmer wanted. So she ran back to the cottage and raced up the ladder to her loft bed, where she lay shivering with fear—but only for a few moments.
As soon as Margaret Sabine heard of her parents’ arrest, Sara guessed, she would send some of her servants to the cottage with instructions to bring her along to the mayor’s house. That would still leave her at Culmer’s mercy, so she had to run. The problem for the girl was that, because she had always been so shy, she had no friends other than Sophia whose family might take her in and hide her. So she had to make a decision, and quickly—would she stay cowering in bed until her parents’ enemies came to get her or would she overcome her lifelong shyness and seek help from neighbors she’d never really gotten to know very well?
Sara chose not to wait for capture. She resolutely put some fruit and cheese and a small gourd of water in a pack and left the cottage, walking east away from Canterbury rather than west toward the city. She didn’t know that she barely left in time—perhaps fifteen minutes after she shut the door behind her, Margaret Sabine’s people arrived looking for her. But all they found was an empty cottage; Sara was out of sight in the nearby hills.
She knew that she should go to one of the other houses in the vicinity, identify herself to whoever lived there, and ask for shelter. Almost all the neighbors, she knew from overhearing conversations between her parents, Arthur, and me, opposed the banning of Christmas and were unlikely to turn a thirteen-year-old girl over to the nasty clutches of Blue Richard Culmer. But the thought of talking to someone she didn’t know was almost as frightening as the sight of her loved ones as prisoners. Sara truly was shy, and the habits of a lifetime, even one that had so far lasted only thirteen years, were hard to overcome. So, that first awful day, she wandered and occasionally tried to find the nerve to ask for help, and always panicked at the last moment. Finally she found a small grove of trees in the space between two low hills. The spot was out of sight of the road, and Sara huddled there as the day dwindled into night, chilled by bitter December winds and petrified by the horrible turn her life had taken.
As she crouched for hours with her cloak pulled tight around her though, she began to think about overcoming fear, and about each person’s responsibility, if something wrong is being done, to try and stop it. The three people she loved most in the world, the adults she looked to for guidance and protection, were undoubtedly in a Canterbury dungeon. There was nothing she could do about that. But she could, at least, do something about the Christmas protest they had so deeply believed in that they were willing to risk their freedom, even their lives, to help organize and lead it.
Just as the sun rose the next morning, December 20, a farmer named John Mason heard a knock on his cottage door. He opened it to find a young girl standing outside, shivering both with cold and nerves.
“My name is Sara, and I need to talk to you,” she said, almost choking out the words because she so much wanted to turn and run instead. “You know my parents, Alan and Elizabeth Hayes, and my Auntie Layla. You’ve been meeting with them about the protest on Christmas.”
“I’m afraid they’ve been arrested, child,” Mason said, gesturing for his wife to come over and help him bring the shuddering girl inside. “It is a sad thing, indeed.” The Masons fussed over Sara, putting extra wood on the fire to help her get warm, and insisting she eat some hot mush. Sara swallowed several spoonfuls before she felt strong enough to say anything more.
John Mason
“They trusted you very much,” she finally said. “At night, they would talk about how brave you are, how they expected you, Mr. Mason, to be one of the best captains on Christmas Day.”
Mason shrugged sadly. “I would have been proud to take part in any way I was needed. Now, of course, there will be no protest, since our leaders are captured and our plans are ruined. It would have been a good thing to save Christmas, but now all we can do is hope your parents and auntie don’t give the rest of us away to Blue Richard Culmer.”
Sara took a deep breath. “You’re wrong, Mr. Mason.”
He looked worried and asked, “You mean, you think your family will identify the rest of us in hopes of saving themselves?”
“No, not at all. My parents and auntie are very brave people. But now we have to be brave, too, and hold the protest that all of you have planned for so long.”
“Our leaders are gone, child,” Mason protested.
“Then we have to be the leaders, sir,” Sara replied. “Those who stand by watching something wrong being done are as guilty as the people who do the bad thing. My auntie taught me that. Help me talk to all the people who were helping to plan the protest. We have to march on Christmas day. We have to.”
For the next few days, Sara and John Mason walked dozens of miles, quietly visiting all the captains who’d been named by Arthur and convincing them that they still must march. A few could not be persuaded. Because of the arrests at the barn, they were now too afraid of Blue Richard Culmer, Avery Sabine, and the rest of the Puritans. Many were shocked to see a teenaged girl assuming leadership of such a complicated, important effort. No one realized how hard it was for that thirteen-year-old to overcome her bashfulness and talk to so many people. But Sara did this, and very effectively. She remembered all she had overheard from her loft bed when the adults downstairs were talking—how, above all, they wanted thousands of marchers, so sheer numbers would prevent arrests or other reprisals by Culmer, Sabine, and the Trained Band. So, when she had convinced most of the captains to continue the protest, she emphasized to them that they, in turn, must recruit as many other people as possible.
Then, leaving the adults to that task, Sara herself spent hours talking to other children. It was hard, at first. Besides her natural shyness, Sara also had a bad reputation among her peers to overcome. Boys and girls in Canterbury were all aware of her special friendship with Sophia, the richest child in town. While the rest of the working-class children had to help their parents in the fields or in shops, Sara had been enjoying private lessons and fine meals with Sophia, and so she was often resented. Her bashfulness was mistaken for snobbiness. But now, for the first time, she sought out other young people and talked to them about Christmas, how special it was, how it must somehow be saved. She explained the purpose of the march and its intended message to Parliament. Even more than the adults, the children understood: No one should have the right to force beliefs on others. And so a whole new youthful battalion of protestors was added to the demonstrators’ ranks.
By the time of the final planning meeting, on the night of December 24 in the barn high atop the hill, the protestors accepted Sara as a leader. A week earlier, everyone would have considered such a thing impossible, particularly those who realized just how bashful she was. But, in times of emergency, intelligence, imagination, and courage are the most important traits, and no one had more of these than Sara. Mayor Sabine and the Trained Band assumed the plans for protest were dead, so Sara and the five dozen adults with her were able to meet in the barn without too much concern that soldiers might come for them. If they were still understandably nervous, they were excited, too.
“We have to remember tomorrow to approach all six gates at once,” Sara cautioned. “One big crowd at one gate will
just alert the guards. So let’s gather everyone here just after dawn, then divide into six groups.”
“How do you think of such things, young lady?” someone asked.
Sara smiled. “I heard Mr. Arthur say it to my parents and auntie.” Here, she was displaying another sign of true leadership by not taking credit for someone else’s good idea, even though she could have. Then, Sara and John Mason, who had also stepped forward to lead, reminded everyone that there was not to be any violence on the part of the protestors.
“The moment even one of us strikes a blow or throws a stone or breaks a shop window, that will give the mayor and Trained Band an excuse to claim we were rioting rather than protesting,” Mason explained. “They’ll use it as further evidence that Christmas is sinful and that those who support it are criminals. So we will march—”
“And sing,” Sara added.
“And sing,” Mason agreed, smiling fondly at the girl who he had come to admire very much. “We will have ourselves a very special Christmas celebration right on High Street, and when Sara gives the signal, waving her hands over her head, then we will all march back out of town to our homes. If we begin at noon, the whole business should take no more than an hour. This will be sufficient to make our message clear. Anything longer, and one of our people or one of the Trained Band might do something unfortunate. We want a brisk, peaceful protest.”
Mason paused a moment, then said, “There is one thing more. We know, of course, that Sara’s parents and auntie, along with their friend Arthur, are being held in the town jail. Certain information has reached us. By Mayor Sabine’s order, tomorrow on Christmas Day they are to be taken out and put in the stocks as examples of how anyone who celebrates Christmas will be punished from now on. Those entering town from the West Gate must immediately get to the stocks and free them. Place them in the middle of the marchers, so that Sabine and his Trained Band can’t recapture them. Clark, you are a blacksmith by trade.” A massive man nodded. “Well, then, bring along a hammer and chisel for breaking the locks on the stocks. But use them only to strike the locks, no matter how tempted you might become to tap Mayor Sabine once or twice, as well.”
Afterward, Mason and Sara walked back to his home, where she was staying with him and his wife. “We’re going to save your parents and auntie,” he promised.
“We’re going to save Christmas, too,” Sara replied.
Clark the Blacksmith
She did not sleep that night. During the hours before dawn, she thought about many things—what if, for instance, the protest failed? It was possible Avery Sabine might be smart enough to order the city gates locked all Christmas Day long, to keep potential protestors out. Or what if not enough people showed up to march? Originally, her parents, Auntie Layla, and Arthur had hoped for a thousand marchers, perhaps two thousand. But if only a hundred or so actually participated, then the march would have no effect other than reassuring Mayor Sabine that few people really cared about saving Christmas after all.
Then Sara shed many tears, not from fear of failure, but because she missed her parents and auntie so much. She was being very brave by overcoming her shyness and stepping in to lead the protest, but she was still a thirteen-year-old girl who loved her family and was afraid for them. What if the marchers frightened the mayor and Trained Band so much that they turned their guns on the four Christmas prisoners?
Gradually, though, Sara calmed herself by realizing she had done all she could to prepare. She could not control the future. It had to be enough, just then, to know that she had tried to do the things she should. After a while, Sara slept, and she dreamed about a stout man with a white beard and warm smile, who patted her arm and told her that her courage was going to help save Christmas. When she woke, she remembered the man in her dream, and somehow this comforted her very much.
Christmas Day of 1647 in England dawned clear and cold. Fluffy white clouds decorated bright blue sky. Sara and John Mason gulped down porridge and hurried to the high hill where the protestors were to gather. As they walked, they talked quietly, mostly wondering how many people would come to join the march.
“Five hundred, at least,” Mason guessed. “All our captains report they have met with enthusiastic response. Five hundred people gathered together on High Street will make for a very impressive demonstration, Sara.”
“Five hundred won’t be enough,” she told him. “We must have a thousand or more. Only that kind of multitude will convince Parliament that Christmas can’t be taken from us or intimidate Mayor Sabine and the Trained Band so none of us are arrested.”
“Perhaps you shouldn’t get your hopes up,” Mason cautioned, and just then they passed a bend in the road and the steep hill with the barn on top sloped up before them. Usually, the barn looked quite striking, standing alone, silhouetted against the sky. But on this Christmas morning, there was a far more remarkable sight.
All up and down the hillside, a massive crowd of men, women, and children were waiting. They were wrapped in cloaks against the cold, and the raggedness of many of those cloaks indicated that the very poorest people of Canterbury and the surrounding area had come to march on behalf of Christmas. Though the morning was frosty and the act they were about to carry out was so risky, there was still about them a sort of excitement, even joy. As Sara and Mason approached, they were greeted with hearty shouts of “Merry Christmas.” For the first time in her life, children her own age swarmed to Sara, greeting her like the special friend she had become to all of them, and this pleased her so much that she smiled despite the nervousness she still felt. And, even as those already there milled about, many more people kept coming to the hill, arriving from every direction.
“How many—” Sara began, awed by the crowd.
“Five, six, even seven thousand,” John Mason gasped. “Who ever would have believed it? The love of Christmas truly runs deep in many hearts.”
He and Sara called over their captains, who in turn gathered about them the people they had recruited for the march, and as they did, even more men, women, and children continued arriving, until finally about an hour before noon Mason estimated ten thousand were ready to march. He told the captains to get everyone’s attention. It took several minutes. Someone had written a proclamation stating that the people of England would have Christmas back, even if it meant having the king back, too. He was asking everyone to sign, and the Xs most of them made—few could actually write their names—took up many pages. Arthur would have forbidden the proclamation, because he wanted to keep the issue of celebrating the holiday separate from the fate of Charles I, but Mason and Sara didn’t think of this and let the petition be passed around and signed. Finally, when the crowd was mostly silent, Mason and Sara stood before them. She was quaking inside. It had been one thing to talk in front of a few dozen people. Ten thousand seemed like too many, and for several panic-stricken moments she was sure she couldn’t do it. But then she thought of Christmas, and her parents, and about what her Auntie Layla had taught her, and so she spoke. Her voice was still low rather than loud, but in a way that helped quiet the crowd, since they had to stop whispering among themselves to hear her.
“Merry Christmas to you all,” she began, and ten thousand shouts of “Merry Christmas” came in response. “Today, we will march into Canterbury and save Christmas. There’s really nothing left to say, except to remind you that we must enter all six gates at once, meet in the High Street market, and carry on from there.”
“And no violence,” John Mason added. “Any blow you strike will hurt Christmas more than it hurts the holiday-haters.”
“Can we hit them back if they strike us first?” inquired a short, feisty man.
“As the Bible instructs us, turn the other cheek,” Mason replied. “Remember this young lady’s parents and aunt are Mayor Sabine’s prisoners. We must not give him an excuse to do anything awful to them. All ready? Then let’s march to Canterbury!”
The throng overflowed the road as they walked swiftly
toward the town. Just before they came into sight of its walls, the march captains divided the marchers into six separate units. These half-dozen battalions of more than fifteen hundred each took different routes to Canterbury, arriving at the six town gates at approximately the same time. Sara, John Mason, and the blacksmith named Clark made certain they led the group at the West Gate, since it was their intention to rescue the four “Christmas criminals” from the stocks.
As the town bell tower tolled noon, the marchers surged forward from six different directions. The guards at the gates were simply overwhelmed. Even if they had thought of trying to slam the gates shut, all at once there were so many people surrounding them that they couldn’t have done it anyway.
Down into the city swept the six groups of protestors, hustling past the few dozen armed Trained Band soldiers who, at any rate, had no idea of what to do. Coming through the West Gate, Sara and her group saw ahead of them the four sets of stocks, with Mayor Sabine standing in front preparing to address a crowd. They increased their pace, and the pounding of their feet on the street echoed off the buildings and alerted the mayor to their presence. He turned, saw them approaching, turned pale with fear, and dropped his written speech into the dirt. Then, in his heavy, graceless way, he ran for his home, more anxious to save himself from any possible danger than to confront the marchers.
It was only as the mayor turned to flee that first Elizabeth, then the other three of us in the stocks were able to see an apparent multitude of demonstrators spill into High Street, with a very familiar blondehaired, blue-eyed thirteen-year-old girl in the lead. That sight caused her mother to gasp, “Is it really possible?” and then the burly blacksmith was smashing the locks that held us in the stocks, and we were free to throw our arms around Sara and gaze in wonder at all the people who had come to protest on behalf of Christmas.